US Hate Incidents Rise Sharply After Trump Win: Records

Soon after Donald Trump's presidential election victory, the number of hate crime incidents in US has increased, as per a report released recently by a civil rights advocacy group - Southern Poverty Law Center.

(Representative Image)

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Washington: Soon after Donald Trump's presidential election victory, the number of hate crime incidents in US has increased, as per a report released recently by a civil rights advocacy group - Southern Poverty Law Center.

As per news report published in Reuters on November 29, 2016, "The number of hate and bias incidents reported across the United States spiked in the 10 days following Donald Trump's presidential election victory."

"Nearly 867 incidents ranging from assaults to threatening graffiti messages reported in US. That is a major increase from the normal rate of hate incidents reported in the United States," Richard Cohen, the group's president, has said as quoted by Reuters.

"What we're seeing is something quite unusual. People are reporting seeing swastikas painted in neighborhoods that they've lived in for 20 years. We've never seen anything like it," said Cohen, who has tracked hate groups for three decades.

(Source: Southern Poverty Law Center)

The incidents included numerous cases of people threatening apparent immigrants with deportation and vandalism deriding black Americans, many of which cited Trump's victory.

They followed an historic presidential campaign in which the New York real estate developer vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, promised to deport millions of unregistered immigrants and mulled restricting Muslim immigration.

Since his victory, Trump had said he rejects acts of violence or harassment, and disavowed the so-called "alt-right" white nationalist movement, which has been a vocal supporter of the president-elect.

"What we'd like to see Mr. Trump do is acknowledge that his own words have fueled the outbreak of hate that we're seeing. He needs to take responsibility and stop pretending he's surprised," Cohen said in a phone interview as published in Reuters. "He needs to speak forcefully and repeatedly against bigotry."

Trump campaigned on a populist platform summed up in his "Make America Great Again" slogan and has vowed to be a more forceful advocate for the U.S. middle class in his negotiations on trade, security and other international issues than his predecessors.

The report found that close to one-third of the incidents that followed the Nov. 8 election represented anti-immigrant sentiments while about one in five were anti-black. Others targeted included lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Muslims, Jews and women, while 23 incidents reflected anti-Trump feelings.

Data released in January by the FBI show there were 5,850 hate crime incidents nationally in 2015, up 6.8 percent from 5,479 in 2014.

(Report published in Reuters on Nov 29, 2016)

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